Tales from a campfire In Between
by Street faerie
Summary: While crossing the lands Rohan, Legolas, Gandalf, Gimli, and Aragorn in the company of Taliesin (a bard) and Ashling (a capricious girl) end up telling each other stories of their past.
1. Default Chapter

Tales from a campfire In Between  
  
-This is a soft place?  
  
-Not the only one. There's a few thousand square miles of Central Australia, a couple of Pacific Islands, a field in Ireland, an occasional mountain in Arizona…  
  
Neil Gaiman  
  
The borders of reality shifted as they left the Forest of Fangorn. What should have only been a day's ride to the city of Edoras, the seat of the horseman's realm, was lasting far longer and the remainder of the Fellowship found themselves out on the vast plains of Rohan as night fell.  
  
The stars came out and there was still no sign of the hill or the Golden Hall. To the east and west was only flatland, the soft green grass that covered all the ground. To the North…  
  
"Look," said Legolas. "A fire!" And without additional words the weary band turned around headed together because they had been traveling as a group for so long that certain thoughts did not need to be uttered. As they rode nearer, the fire became a small spark surrounded by a tinker's wagon and two figures, one playing a strange instrument, and the other sat by the fire attempting not to burn something.   
  
"Well, if this is a dream that still doesn't explain why you don't have any marshmallows in that wagon of yours," the four heard a high female voice say. Whatever else she might have added was cut up by the sound of their own arrival. The pair stood and waited for the riders to say something.  
  
"Greetings, we were not expecting to find anyone on the plains of Rohan save ourselves. Do you not know that orcs patrol these lands unchecked?" said Aragorn from the height of his horse. The musician mused a space of time before speaking.  
  
"Rohan? My." replied the man. Standing he was of medium height and build, his hair shone like a dull copper in the firelight. The shadows danced on his breeches and tunics, making a night's forest out of their browns. "And the young lady thought that this was Tir Na nOg. But please, forgive me for my rudeness. Come share our fire for the meadows are strange tonight and phantoms haunt the hills. I at least am real."  
  
"Oh, and I suppose that the other on isn't?" asked Gimli.  
  
"No, she is but a dream, something my sleepy head has conjured up, much like yourselves."  
  
"We are no dreams," said Gandalf. "But in good faith we will share your fire for it would be no good to let travelers come to harm, even if one is not real." The wizard dismounted from his unearthly white horse and let the majestic creature roam freely. The ranger tied up the other two horses to the wagon, next to the tinker's own pony. They stood uneasy as the breath before a thunderstorm, and waited, eyeing the illusionary girl and the musician.   
  
"You may call me Gandalf," the wizard said after a time. Tonight his radiant robes seemed to cast his own light rather than reflect the fire's. And the strange calm became more natural and peaceful, like the breath of a rainbow after a heavy storm.  
  
"I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn. This is Gimli, son of Gloin and Legolas of the woodland realm." he introduced. To the strangers' eyes each was as separate as the seasons. Aragorn dressed in a ranger's dark clothing and carried himself with both regal assertion and the desire to fade into the shadows. Gimli was despite -- or because -- of his short stature proud and uncompromising. He was a beard, a helmet, an axe, but all well taken care of. And Legolas, who was everything Gimli was not: tall, graceful, and fair, looked in his green clothing like a child's version of Robin Hood.   
  
"I'm Taliesin," their host said. "And she claims to be human, but I rather doubt it with such a tree-ish name. Please, sit. Marshmallow?" The man produced a packet of big marshmallows. Each person around the campfire took one to be polite.  
  
"I'm Ashling Derowan, perfectly real and human despite what he says. Although if you believe him, not only am I not real, but a dryad," she said. "He also says that he taught Merlin and that is why he doesn't like my name." She wove around the marshmallow as if each stab in the air added extra punctuation to her words. Her ash blonde hair was pulled half up as an attempt to keep the strands out of her face. Pieces of it still fell in front of her blues eyes. A cream-colored sweater type jacket kept the chill, although it was open revealing a curiously cut black shirt. Her pants were made of a heavy canvass type material and were a dark, deep blue.   
  
The members of the Fellowship looked at the two and waited to see what they were to do with the soft bit of food they had taken. Taliesin carefully ate his, while Ashling impaled hers on a stick and held it over the flame until it was lightly browned. Then she put the browned puff in her mouth and went inside the wagon because Taliesin had asked her to get graham crackers and chocolate since she at least was inclined to make s'mores.   
  
"Y'know some meat would be nice," Gimli said. He eyed the white confection with wariness not believing that anything that was so unnatural could be edible. Even the elven way bread look as if some hand made it. Ashling bounced out of the way with an armful of bags and boxes, and placed them near the others on the ground. She dug out for herself a box of crackers and chocolate and listed off other things for everyone else including a string of sausages and a bushel of potatoes. Everyone took something and ate grateful for the substance except the elf who sat before the fire, but didn't partake of any food.   
  
"So, my friends, what brings you out here?" Taliesin asked.   
  
"We might as well ask the same of you."  
  
"I have already promised the girl a tale of my own. What else is there to do in a campsite? And my friends, you do seem to have an interesting story, for what else would bring an elf, a man, a dwarf, and a wizard to the Riddermark." he said.  
  
"Is that another name for this place?" Ashling said.   
  
"No, it's not."  
  
"Oh, I thought that we were still in Ireland."  
  
"In a way we are. You see many things can happen in a dream. I can talk to my student's jail, and we can sideline people on their quest."  
  
"The house?" Gimli asked, referring to the wagon. "You talk to your house?"  
  
"No master dwarf, but I can talk to her. For my pupil, Merlin will one day be imprisoned by the sorceress Vivian in an Oak tree."  
  
"But he's imprisoned in a cave," Ashling protested.   
  
"All the heroes are sacrificed to trees in some fashion. Dionysus, Odin, Christ, Balder."   
  
"I do not believe so," Legolas added in. "More that trees are sacrificed to men. I have never seen it otherwise. But the forest is used for fires and for houses, and often without thought of what is being hurt." He stared at Taliesin with a glare that would have melted cold iron as he tried to get the man to admit that he was wrong. Taliesin only took a sausage link and skewered it before cooking it. The air became quiet as if listening to what the bard would say next.  
  
"You think to make me wince under that gaze, elf?" he said as the fire crackled. The glow about him increased to almost infernal proportions. "I will not apologize if I offend your wood elf sensibilities. I have faced and challenged the devil himself, and his stare is one that even the mightiest would shudder under." The company lurked in time until a moment later when biting into his sausage brought them out of that spell and into another. "Since Ashling was niggling me before to explain how I became 'Merlin-the-greatest-wizard-that-ever-was's' teacher, I might as well begin our night's entertainment."  
  
The moon was beginning to travel over the meadow, and those spirits who were too good for hell and too evil for heaven stopped their mischief to listen. The fire crackled and the food was set aside and Taliesin the bard began his story.   
  
----  
  
Disclaimer: despite how much I would like it, most of the characters and places are not public domain, and won't be for a very, very long time. They belong to the Tolkien estate. However, Taliesin has long been a character that has been used and abused for centuries. Ashling Derowan is, despite her claims, a figment of my imagination.   
  
The next chapter will contain references here and there to the characters you all care about and (with any luck) not just the ones I've thrown in for my own amusement. 


	2. The Devil and Bard in Mirkwood Forest

Chapter Two: The Devil and the Bard in Mirkwood forest. 

Imagine, if you will, a land that is not of green hills and grass but a country covered in oaks and birch as old as time. A forest, like any forest, has something primordial in its boughs. Here the stags are Cernunnous. Here they are chased by wild hunters who imagine themselves as wolves and bears, and gain teeth and tails. The floor is thick with underbrush and briars scrape them. There are no paths cut through the vegetation. Tomorrow, when they wake, they will make a way others can follow as they trudge back to their village mending scratches and bruises. They cut a path out into lucidity, and others will use it to go in and find the woods. 

The woods are littered with such routes.

The woods are where we go mad.

I had, as a young man, met a lady who lived in a lake. Things like that do not happen in villages of any sort. She had rescued me from a wild boar which was trying to gouge me. And years later, I found myself in that part of the woods again. By the Lady's Lake, in the rushes was a basket that held under the scraps of clothing, an infant. And with wonder, I pulled the basket to the shore, amazed to find the child still alive.

The make of the basket was foreign to me. Not crafted in the ways of the woman who were native to these lands. Immediately, when I touched him I could see what had happened. The boy's mother was from a town that was inhabited by strangers from the south. The leader was a religious man who worshipped a sky god from the far ends of the world, and the woman (who was barely out of childhood herself) had been converted. Her priests claimed the child was demon-spawn (and perhaps he was) and she had put it in a basket because demon's, she thought, were evil things and maybe one of the heathen villages would find him. If he drowned, well did the Bible not condemn demons?

A merlin had landed on a tree branch and that is what I called him. Merlin. That is what the woods decided.

I had seen the boy's future as well as his past. In an instant I saw meddling and Kings. The madness that would sweep over him. The lover who would betray him. I saw a man changing his skin, and a boy who would pull a sword out of a stone that he himself has placed there. I saw a stone circle being lifted from a veldt, the last of a giant's monument, to over the sea onto my land. I had seen a future; as to whether these event were real or just one of many possibilities, I could not tell. And there should have been signs. The stars themselves should have revealed to us that such a force. Nature should have manifested itself, and I could not believe at that time that anyone could be stronger than Hengwr, my teacher, in anyway. 

Before we came to my village, we saw in the distance a small hut made of bones. It was the house of a witch, who was not quite a hag, but closer to the moon than beauty. The bones were taken from all sorts of things, and the eave was covered in skulls. (Later, a Christian hermit will live in that spot in a hut mad a mud and moss.) The witch, a fat thing, not necessarily an old thing, was outside waiting for me. With a skeletal finger she gestured for me and the babe to come with her inside.

That would have been a foolish thing to do. More foolish than coming to a witch's house unprepared and without gifts. But perhaps the witch knew of destiny for that day (to which I am in her debt) she answered my question with out riddles.

"You have seen his future, yes bard. No accident either. Memories," she said as she eyed the babe. Her green eyes feasted -- yes, feasted! -- upon the child, tasting his flesh and toying with the marrow of his bones. But she saw something else there and did not ask me to give the child up. "He grew young."

"Pardon me, Goodwife?" I asked.

"The boy, he is living both ways in time. He will be important in England's history," she said, and then she leaned over the child and told me directly in a voice that was gravel rough. "Others will try and claim him. And then what you have seen will not be." Then she shuffled her body inside and, since I was loathed to follow her, I brought the boy back to my village. There he grew up under the tutorage of my master, Hengwr and myself. We taught him about the woods, and he learned their secrets. The woods have many secrets after all, just as they have a language which we use as our letters. He grew in ways we did not expect. Merlin was gifted with second sight, but could not tell his own future or that of anyone who's thread was entangled with his. And that would be his downfall.

The witch had warned me that others may come for him. And she was there one May Day's Eve, when we lit bon fires to welcome back the goddess and her consort. Her green eyes noticed the strange man who was talking to the young boy. At first I thought he was of the gentle kin but I could not recall his face among Titania's court. He had a face that was sublime, what once might have been angelic but with earthly experience. Merlin regarded him with curiosity and awe.

"Well met," I said to him.

"Well met indeed, bard. I was wondering if you might notice to meddle." He said. His smile was only surpassed by a sunrise after the longest night of the year. He was beautiful, not handsome, not strong. A young person's face without a trace of manhood scratching its surface. Into that beauty was a need for trust: I wanted to believe in him and what he said. 

When he offered to teach my protégé his words unraveled into their fragile lies. I knew of many spirits but had only heard of one who was a such a combination of innocence and pride. Morningstar he had called himself, and that was true. Adversary, the Bright One, Scratch, the Devil. The first to fall. The Tempter.

"No, absolutely not," I responded.

"I have a claim," he said. "You can not dispute that."

"I can challenge it," I told him. The Devil laughed. He always laughs. He is prideful, and just as this is the first among sins, it is his downfall.

We agreed to fight in the oldest way and we ran through the forest slipping into one skin and out of it again. I changed into a fox and he become a wolf. Bear, snake. Bobcat, tick. Anteater, lion. We chased and ran and fought through dwarf evergreens to great redwoods. He had become a bull, a rampaging creature with hoof's like knifes being thrown down with thousand pounds of force. I turned into a hare, small yes, but fast and able to hop through the roots and bushes of the forest.

This forest was a maze! What luck I found, I could lose him and recover a bit of strength. He at least was more injured than I, but the Devil is determined. I would run until I was lost. Then I would rest. The forest was criss-crossed a dozen times over by myself until I had become confused in the tress and not paying attention to where I was going I fell into a snare. The ropes grasped around my foot and my little hare chin came into a brilliant contact with the ground.

SMACK!

And try as I might, I couldn't break free. I struggled and struggled and exhausted collapsed. Doomed to die as a rodent, I Taliesin, wizard and bard, was vainly trying to reach the accursed rope to chew my way through when I smelled something rank coming up from behind me. A creature I had never seen before, it looked like a man only blacker -- not like the earth-kissed men from the south where the sun in closer and there is no winter --, black as a raven's wing. His eyes were small and they were cruel. The foul smelling thing leaned over me, his mouth opened into a plethora of uneven, ragged and sharp teeth. And he laughed as a I tried to run despite being tied and my leg being sprained.

But the forest was not only inhabited by such vile creatures that despised the sun. Fortune still smile, and Fate was interested in keeping her scant promises. An arrow flew from the trees, and from my height it might have come from the sky. But it was a valiant shot, a firm shot and truly found its mark better than Robin Hood might have. Then into the clearing came a forest god, a Greenman if I ever did see one myself. He was the golden light of a summer's afternoon. And after killing the thing that was most certainly going to kill me, he noticed the small hare in his midst and undid the snare.

(Ah, sweet liberty, is this what they sing about in your country, Ashling?)

And then he raised me up, gently as a breeze will make the leaves dance on the ground in autumn, with the intention of setting me free (I'm sure of it, people like that do not eat hares for dinner) but he paused. Perhaps he saw my leg, perhaps he noticed my eyes which held some human intelligence still, perhaps he sensed that the Devil was searching and almost upon me. For whatever reason, he did not leave me to fend for myself, but put me into a journey sack and lightly ran to his village where another came and gave me food and looked at my leg. 

The elves, they say are great healers. And the elf had helped me, within a few hours, I could run again. And run I did, out of the elven town in the trees faster than almost anything else. With magpie wings I flew and planned my next action. Their kindness had given me an idea about how to win the oldest game. I flew and flew until I found another trap, and there I waited, as small as a dormouse until he came in whatever guise he wanted. And thus it was that I saw a monkey, and when he noticed me, transformed into a white kitten. 

There is nothing more pathetic is the world that seeing a fluffy kitten trapped. And he struggled, and he fought, but he couldn't make free. And I leaned over him, as a man, I leaned over him and untied the snare, and picked up the small form and petted it softly before putting him down.

As beautiful as dawn, the devil stood in front of me. The golden curls of his head hid his bowed face.

"Why? You could have left me there," he said.

"Yes, I could have," I said.

"And you would have won."

"Yes, I would have."

"Why? Why not let the Devil suffer?"

"Because I have," I said. And I do not know which he found more vexing: that I had saved him, or that I had left him at that moment alone and in my debt. The Morningstar is prideful, and he will remember. And I went back to a more familiar wood because it was almost dawn and tomorrow was another day.

*

"So," said Ashling, "Did you ever pay back the person who helped you?" She glanced sideways at the elf who sat beside her. He looked a bit like the kind of light right before sunset in summer, she thought. The others around the campfire looked at him.

"And perhaps it was because elves do not eat meat," the dwarf said smugly. "Or anything else at all." During the story, Gimli had braved one of Ashling's s'mores and had decided that while it was not red meat off the bone, it was edible. Kind of tasty, in a superficial way. 

"I thought elves ate," said Ashling.

Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries; --

All ripe together…

"That would be goblins," Taliesin said. The four Middle-Earthers, who had never heard of Christina Rossetti, frowned at the reference to such unpleasant creatures. 

"The creature would have been an orc," Legolas said. "And he would not add any side of berries." The elf's high voice rang out with displeasure, he did not like to talk about such perversions of nature as orcs and goblins. Not even the colorful fictions of Victorian writers. 

"But it was you," said Ashling. 

"Clearly, you have not met many elves," Aragorn said as he indulged in his pipe. "There are many elves who fit that description."

"And among all the races, it is elves who can not abide cruelty the most," said Gandalf. "But I do believe that Legolas might know more than he would be willing to say." And Ashling, who was now more interested in burning marshmallows than eating them jerked her head up as if to respond, but blew out the flaming object instead before it melted onto the grass.

"Or perhaps he should be the next to tell or sing," Taliesin said.

"I could tell you a story of my people, one of the legends of long ago," he said quietly into the fire.

"No!" the girl protested. "It should be a true story, about yourself. Or as true as you can tell it."

Gimli smiled. "I have been traveling with this pansy elven princeling awhile, it would be good to hear a tale about him. And then I will find a fine story for you all."

The fire continued to burn without needing additional wood although every now and then the wind would pick up and push the flames in a dance to one side of another. And without bravado, Legolas simply began his tale.

Random stuff: Ashling quotes from Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" lines 9-15.


End file.
